Best Anime Like Tokyo Revengers

Highlights

• Tokyo Revengers success in manga led to a popular anime adaptation with multiple seasons.
• Delinquents aiming for gang supremacy drive the action-packed Tokyo Revengers storyline.
• Wind Breaker is a similar delinquent-based anime worth checking out, despite lacking time travel elements.

Launching in 2017 and ending in 2022, Ken Wakui’s Tokyo Revengers performed well as part of the Weekly Shonen Magazine lineup. The manga quickly spawned an anime adaptation, one that has spanned multiple seasons. While not every arc in the saga is highly regarded, both the manga and its adaptation have garnered quite a lot of praise. That said, the anime still has a ways to go before it completely adapts the source material.

Tokyo Revengers follows Takemichi, a good-for-nothing guy who time-travels back to his teenage years when he was part of a weak gang. Desperate to change fate, which includes the future murder of his old girlfriend, Takemichi sets out to become the head of the Tokyo Manji Gang. Naturally, this process proves to be anything but simple. Although not all revolve around gang warfare, there are quite a few anime like Tokyo Revengers that fans of the latter might enjoy.

Updated on April 14, 2024, by Mark Sammut: Although not announced yet, Tokyo Revengers will likely come back for a new season sooner rather than later. The anime still has a couple of arcs to cover, perhaps even enough for two cours. While waiting for that day to come, fans can check out some anime similar to Tokyo Revengers, including a Spring 2024 series that has just started airing episodes.

11 Wind Breaker

Noble Delinquents

A Spring 2024 show, Wind Breaker is still in its infancy, with the anime only airing a few episodes so far. While perhaps premature to describe this series as a great option for fans of Tokyo Revengers, the currently available content has enough positives to, at the very least, warrant a temporary recommendation. More importantly, Wind Breaker is shaping up to be an entertaining delinquent-based anime, and these types of stories should be treasured as they do not come around often.

Now, CloverWorks’ series does not feature any sort of time-travel or supernatural elements, and nor does it seem to incorporate a mystery element. As such, if somebody mainly loves Tokyo Revengers for these aspects, they might want to look elsewhere. That said, Wind Breaker nails the delinquent aesthetic and hierarchy. An outcast for most of his life, Haruka Sakura moves to a town with a bad reputation and signs up at Furin High School, with his ultimate goal being to fight his way to the top. Despite having far different motives and skill sets, Haruka and Takemichi are both striving to become heads of gangs, a journey that requires them to take on responsibilities that might go beyond their current abilities.

Unlike Takemichi, Haruka can hold his own in a fight; however, he struggles to play nice with others due to inherently distrusting everyone. This isolation drove him to Furin, only for the teenager to learn that the school had recently turned the corner. Nowadays, Furin’s students act as the town’s guardians, helping to keep the streets safe. If Haruka wants to make it to the top, he needs to bring more to the plate than just martial arts.

10 Yu Yu Hakusho: Ghost Files

Shonen Classic

People who love a show about high school delinquents will find Yu Yu Hakusho to be right up their alley. The series features a known troublemaker who risks his life to save a child, an act that results in his death but also grants him a second chance as a spirit detective.

Yu Yu Hakusho features some iconic shonen moments, with the Dark Tournament arc being the best of the bunch. It might not have aged all that gracefully in place, but it’s still a brilliant title for fans of Tokyo Revengers to check out if they want stellar action, lovable delinquents, and an ambitious sense of scale.

9 Starting Today, It’s My Turn!!

Delinquent Anime That Embraces The Silliness

Tokyo Revengers is all about teenagers engaging in deadly battles for street supremacy; consequently, the story is packed to the brim with delinquents. The dissonance created by the scale of the gang warfare and the characters’ ages can be off-putting, especially since the show takes itself very seriously. If someone wants a delinquent anime that does not mind laughing at itself every once in a while, Kyou Kara Ore Wa!! is the series for them.

Determined to start high school off on the “best” note, Mitsuhashi goes blond and embraces the delinquent lifestyle. While he initially butts heads with another teenager, Ito, they eventually form something of a super group as they take on other bosses and eventually have a run-in with the Yakuza. Although not lacking in fights, Kyou Kara Ore Wa!! leans heavily into its humor, which largely hits the mark.

8 Great Teacher Onizuka

After The Gang Life…

Great Teacher Onizuka is about an ex-gang member who stumbles his way into teaching children. He may not be a delinquent himself anymore, but he still uses silly tactics to get the job done. Even though he comes across as crass, Onizuka has a heart of gold and genuinely cares about his kids.

It takes a while for everyone to warm up to him, but that’s part of the fun of the show. The tender moments are sweet, but so is watching the vice principal’s beloved car get totaled repeatedly.

7 Cromartie High School

A Hilarious Delinquent Comedy

Cromartie High School is a slapstick comedy that is presented as a Sunday comic strip. Each episode has several skits which sometimes tie together thematically.

The comedy comes into play given the juxtaposition of the street toughs looking cool but behaving like nerds or total goofs. It’s a dramatically different feel than Tokyo Revengers, but both anime feature delinquents who act way beyond their ages.

6 Charge!! Men’s Private School

A Delinquent Classic

Debuting as a manga in 1985 and airing its sole anime season in 1988, Charge!! Men’s Private School is a well-known property in Japan that received a few spin-offs and sequels over the last two decades. In the West, the show never quite hit it big, and its lack of (legal) availability has not helped matters. Nevertheless, this delinquent school anime is worth watching if the opportunity arises, particularly for fans of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure or Fist of the North Star.

Now, Charge!! Men’s Private School is quite different from Tokyo Revengers, but that is exactly why it is recommended. As a protagonist, Momo is the direct opposite of Takemichi, and he can act as a nice palette cleanser when the latter begins to become frustrating. The anime is also over-the-top nonsense in the best possible way.

5 Steins;Gate

The Ultimate Time Travel Anime

Steins;Gate is the definitive time travel anime, along with just being one of the best anime of all time. The story revolves around a ragtag group of smart students who are trying to create a time machine, a journey that mostly seems to be fueled by the ravings of Rintarou Okabe, a self-promoted mad scientist.

Steins;Gate moves at a very different pace than Tokyo Revengers, and the sci-fi thriller explores the time travel concept rather than just using it as a plot device. The anime’s first half is notoriously slow-paced since it focuses exclusively on the characters’ everyday antics with seemingly little tension or change; however, this leads to an explosive and unforgettable second half.

4 Eden Of The East

Dense Mystery With An Element Of Time Travel

Eden of the East starts with Saki visiting the White House on her Japanese trip. She soon discovers a naked man, Akira, and the two get wound up in a plot involving espionage.

Akira has lost his memory but it seems like he can time travel. How does he do it and for what reason? That’s the core mystery of this short but thrilling mystery anime. The series has an almost slice of life rhythm at times, but the story builds nicely as it quietly explores the main characters and strengthens their relationship. The show leads beautifully into the movie, which is great.

3 Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-

Death Means A Restart

As an isekai anime, Re:Zero‘s setting is nothing like Tokyo Revengers‘ world. The former takes place in a medieval fantasy realm that incorporates things like magic, which is a complete departure from the latter’s modern urban setting. That said, Re:Zero‘s Subaru and Tokyo Revengers‘ Takemichi share a few things in common. Both protagonists are physically weak, at least compared to other key figures who populate their universes; however, they make up for this disadvantage through a unique ability that gives them insight into forthcoming events.

While Takemichi travels through time, Subaru restarts at a checkpoint whenever he dies. Consequently, both characters must use their knowledge of what’s to come to change the future, a process that is rarely painless. Re:Zero gets a bit more complicated than Tokyo Revengers, but the isekai anime is generally fantastic.

2 Erased

A Murder Mystery With A Time Travel Hook

Erased has a plot very similar to Tokyo Revengers. The main character, Satoru, goes home one day to discover his mom had been murdered. This transports him back in time for some reason when he was a child.

Satoru has to solve some mysteries in his past in order to prevent his mother’s murder from taking place. As always there is a lot more to it than that such as love slowly blooming in the schoolyard. What else can Satoru change in the future, or will it end in tragedy?

1 Link Click

Time Traveling To Specific Moments

A Chinese ONA series, Link Click has a fascinating twist on time travel. Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang take on cases revolving around photos, which typically involve a client asking about an image’s context so they can learn about the people in it. The two leads have unique powers that work in tandem together. Cheng Xiaoshi can jump into a photograph and take over the actions of one of the people in the image. On the other hand, Lu Guang gets a holistic view of the world around the photo.

Just to be clear, Cheng is specifically time traveling, and his actions can change the past and future. However, the protagonists try to avoid this as much as possible, which is not always an easy task. As Link Click season 2 aired in Summer 2023, Tokyo Revengers fans have a good amount of content to get through.